Jammie Thomas-Rasset has massive file sharing penalty reduced

In 2006, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was sent a letter asking her to settle (for $3300) over alleged unauthorized file sharing of 24 tracks.

She refused and decided to take the case to court.

In 2007, Thomas-Rasset was found liable for $1.92 million in damages, but a retrial saw the fine dropped to $220,000. In 2010, however, a judge reduced the award to $54,000. The RIAA told Thomas-Rasset that they would accept $25,000, if she would agree to ask the judge to remove the decision from the record. She did not accept the terms of the deal and the trial went to part 3. Later that year, Thomas lost again in court, with a jury finding her liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages. The Minnesota woman appealed.

Fast forward to today, and it appears that another judge has reduced the verdict to $54,000 again, calling the original jury award "appalling."

The RIAA has said it is considering appealing in what has to be the longest saga ever involving pirated music tracks.

37 user comments

I bet she has long since then wish she just ponied up the cash for the original $3300 fine. The whole music and movie industry is just nuts when they sue people, I think the 3k fine is still nuts but manageable to pay 54k not so much. They are always talking about loss I don't see much loss in the movie industry. The music industry is true they lose money but it's not from people stealing there music it's the bad music that does not sell. Even then I don't think there falling on hard times, there just being greedy obviously suing people for millions it's just sick.

She can simply file bankruptcy when this is finally over. She is most likely broke and has no assets. The RIAA probably will never get a dime. The RIAA lawyers will get, or should I say have gotten, a wad....from the RIAA. Yes, Jamie could have paid $3000 and the case would have gone away years ago. But then again, the RIAA could have let the case die and saved themselves a bundle. The only winners here are the RIAA lawyers. I bet they are still pinching themselves that this cash cow landed in their laps.

The RIAA thinks that they are winners, because they think that attacking ordinary people will discourage piracy...even if they don't get the fines, they figure people will stop pirating stuff just because they are afraid of a long legal battle (I believe this method is known as terrorism, but I might be wrong).

They also want to make a world where they can just send out threatening letters to everyone on earth, and wait for all the pirates (plus many innocent people) to send money in rather than face them in court. Again, I believe this is technically terrorism (using fear to control people).

So, we are spending trillions on fighting terrorism...and we know where the RIAA is located...time to fire up the drones!!!

A while back there was a book written by a guy named Art Linson called "A Pound of Flesh" about his time spent as a film producer. So my next few words aren't just tripe meant to fall from the sphincter, but to be taken from the horses mouth per se'...

In the book he explains that the movie industry has "NEVER" lost a dime on a movie or TV show since they started making entertainment for the masses. Through creative book keeping they make it appear that they loose millions daily when in fact it's quite the opposite. It's all a scam so as to avoid taxes, royalties and any other future proof payments that may occur to the fattened pockets of the "do something for nothing" moguls of the industry (and god love you if you say anything contrary to their system if you like your career).

$3300 is a lot of money & is extortion; not to mention an immediate admission of guilt just because the alphabet Nazis said so. Then to call them on their BS & have it pay into their pockets in dividends is just insult to injury.

I think one of these ambulance chasers should get off his fat a$$ & get a class action together & start suing the MPAA/RIAA for the little nasty gram campaign for "X" amount of $$$'s (which is extortion... hello!!! ILLEGAL!!!) & get the death penalty going on these guys like China did for the business guile king here recently.

Meh looking at her mode of dress and etc...I am guessing she's using legal aid and they'll never get a penny from her anyway..Prob couldn't scratch up the $3300 in the first place. Not that being poor is a bad thing. Just I would feel much worse if it were someone that was losing everything to lawyer's fees and etc. Not so hard to make a stand when you've got nothing to lose...

She downloads a few songs and arguably doesn't have to goto jail but has her life ruined for ever due to copyright...

And dont forget when the shoe is on the other foot old Andy Crossley who essentially was sending out speculative invoices as it were on behalf of copy right holders and gets away with a £1000 pound fine...

Originally posted by Mr_Bill06: I bet she has long since then wish she just ponied up the cash for the original $3300 fine. The whole music and movie industry is just nuts when they sue people, I think the 3k fine is still nuts but manageable to pay 54k not so much. They are always talking about loss I don't see much loss in the movie industry. The music industry is true they lose money but it's not from people stealing there music it's the bad music that does not sell. Even then I don't think there falling on hard times, there just being greedy obviously suing people for millions it's just sick.

Originally posted by numscull: She can simply file bankruptcy when this is finally over. She is most likely broke and has no assets. The RIAA probably will never get a dime. The RIAA lawyers will get, or should I say have gotten, a wad....from the RIAA. Yes, Jamie could have paid $3000 and the case would have gone away years ago. But then again, the RIAA could have let the case die and saved themselves a bundle. The only winners here are the RIAA lawyers. I bet they are still pinching themselves that this cash cow landed in their laps.

She is bankrupt has been since the first court case.

But filing for bankruptcy doesn't get you out of paying bills completely it's only reduces them if the other party agrees to you paying less of the bill.

If they don't then your bankrupt and still have to pay back the full amount, but it lets you pay back any amount you feel like because an arrangement has been made to hold the bill till it's paid off.

She pays in $1 a day to the bill just to piss off RIAA as the bill will die with her, though that probably won't happen and her kids will probably owe RIAA the rest, as any sort of will she has will go straight towards paying bills other wise the rest of the family can be chased down to pay the rest.

She's done the right thing but the laws haven't been fair to her nor the jury who hand out such large fines and I'd hazard to say probably been asked to hand out such large fines on the side.

xtago,
I am not a lawyer but, if I am not mistaken, she can
file bankruptcy under Chapter 7 in which her non-exempt possessions will be sold to satisfy the debt and any remaining debt is discharged. She can keep her house, car, clothes, furniture, essentials, etc. Of course the bankruptcy court will decide if she cannot pay her debts as a whole. If she files under Chapter 13 some payback system will be set by the court. Now whether down the road she wins the lottery or receives a huge inheritance, I am not sure if she has to turn that over to the RIAA. She probably can't keep any tax check, etc but at least she will not lose everything.

Having gone through bankruptcy some 25+ years ago, it went something like this... Chapter 7 is a full blown version of "nobody gets nothing". This of course is completely dependent upon the state that you live in & is void of federal obligations. I.e., you still have to pay student loans or veteran loans; those are signed in blood & you ain't getting out of those.

Then there is Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is considered a reorganization of funds. Your credit stops for 7 years and you are forced to pay your debtors off over the next 7 years (including your federal ones). The problem with this option is that in some cases the debtors get a say in how this all gets to play out & it can get ugly REAL fast due to the fact that 'you' might go full Chapter 7 in that seven year window. You're not supposed to, but like most ultra rich, they find a loop-hole. So the debtors line up to try & get payed off first.

As far as the Chapter 7 is concerned, most states only allow for filer to keep items costing under $1000, those things considered disposable, that have depreciated bellow 33% their FMV or are 1 piece of transportation & primary domicile. Other than that, in a lot of cases the courts come in, grab what's left, sell it off & divvy it up to the debtors.

Filing taxes has no bearing on bankruptcy at all. Obviously, you didn't make any money.

Even if this lady wins the lottery, if she went bankrupt after the judgement & then won the lottery, the MPAA/RIAA can't touch a thing. It's a double jeopardy kind of thing (lame 'legal' analogy/example, but you might get the idea).

Copyright law has become perverse and the punishment completely detached from the crime in question.

But the more this goes on the more people notice it, instead of scaring people into stop doing its just creating public outcry over the way the accused is treated.

Im not a conspiracy theorist nor a revolutionary, but I find by observation that the world is changing and public option is changing and our generation is waking up to the fact we the great and unwashed masses can make a change and shape a future for the better.

Yes she broke copy right, make her pay a small fine and pay for the tracks in question at market rate or take them from her.

The same as not paying your car tax / import duty or anything else anyone would care to illustrate as comparative.

Im sure im not the only one who saw the proverbial water level drop as the tide went out, to now rise as the wave starts to wash ashore. The digital age has given us the ability to see the world beyond our physical reach, the world is not perfect it never will be as we are all human... But i see more and more people rally under a common and selfless goal and starting to cast away the teaching of grab what you can and screw the rest of them and reconsider the old phrase which I believe goes.

"divided we fall, united we stand"

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 25 Jul 2011 @ 12:12

Good point plasma247... But some would argue the analogy of "stealing being stealing"; doesn't matter if it's a paper clip or the Eiffel Tower, the punishment should befitting.

My problem, as well as it seems to be shared with others, is that there is grand larceny damages when it's almost petty misdemeanor. Albeit, the case for copyright infringement was brought up, the fact is 'songs' were stolen. They stated the equivalent of 2 albums worth.

If I read you correctly, proper restitution for today's society would be the equivalent of shoplifting the value of two CDs & whatever that criminal record mandates?

Doesn't give the MPAA/RIAA much bragging rights or any breathing room to bully anybody for anything else, but it most certainly seems proper for what the crimes were that originally took place.

I mean, what was the MPAA doing when folks were stealing DVDs off the rack? Or what was ASCAP/BMI doing when folks were making cassettes? I never got busted back in the 70s - 80s...

Exactly Sir Lord, I went to college with a number of people who used to pinch from hmv and alike, many got caught, non went to jail over it..... or were asked to pay $1000's back for their crime. Theft is theft, but as ever one rule can not be applied to every case.

The punishment should fit the crime, someone who steals food because they cant afford any should never be tared with the same brush as those who show no regard others and say break into a house to steal your car keys.

I can think of any other crime where the punishment (in the west) is so far detached from the crime...

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 26 Jul 2011 @ 12:35

Jammie did not steal anything. I do not know why she, and others, are considered pirates or thieves. What she was accused of was "making available" songs that she may have bought or acquired legally. I know she is denying it, but for the sake of argument, the crime she is accused of is giving away ripped music to whomever wanted it through PnP software. She is not accused of making any money from it. It may or may not have prevented music sales (hard to prove, especially how much). And let us not forget, there have been falsely accused people through errors, but most people do not have the resources to fight back. Not all accused are guilty, but they realize it is cheaper to pay a settlement than a lawyer and they do not have the time or will to go through the many years it takes to fight it in court. The RIAA has deep pockets. The common citizens who are being picked on, right or wrong, do not. Who is the pirate here?

Originally posted by numscull: Jammie did not steal anything. I do not know why she, and others, are considered pirates or thieves. What she was accused of was "making available" songs that she may have bought or acquired legally. I know she is denying it, but for the sake of argument, the crime she is accused of is giving away ripped music to whomever wanted it through PnP software. She is not accused of making any money from it. It may or may not have prevented music sales (hard to prove, especially how much). And let us not forget, there have been falsely accused people through errors, but most people do not have the resources to fight back. Not all accused are guilty, but they realize it is cheaper to pay a settlement than a lawyer and they do not have the time or will to go through the many years it takes to fight it in court. The RIAA has deep pockets. The common citizens who are being picked on, right or wrong, do not. Who is the pirate here?

If this was the case i would consider it a pretty hard if not impossible task to prove on any p2p network that the files originated from her.

Someone seeds a file, she downloads it and the seed goes offline, this would look like she was the originally point of share for a time, until other users started to obtain the files.

In a p2p network assuming there is more than one version of x file online the files would only ever be partially downloaded from her, assuming they were wrapped into a rar/zip or some type of archive. The pieces from her would have been pretty much useless until put together with other pieces from someone else to make a complete file.

And arguably Digital copies of music in lossy formats like MP3 are not a true representation of the original file in this case i assume CDDA. MP3/AAC is a lossy format after all, its only a representation of the original file.

How many songs in the past have sounded similar to what ever other song and gotten away with it, although again they were most likely a representation of something else.

From far away yes, they look the same, but on much closer inspection you can see once encoded into a digital format using a lossy codedc it can no longer be called a copy and only a representation of the original, due to the nature of the way a lossy compression system works.

If she was sharing music from her machine, there was many many users on kazaa and earlier p2p system that just went share disk C, which lead of bank details and all sorts being pilfered, they surely would have to prove she installed the p2p client in the first place and then prove she was actively encouraging others to download from her and knowingly created mp3's or what ever from the original disks for that purpose. If not the best you could argue was that she shared the files either knowingly or unknowingly, but not that she had intention or even knew they were being distributed to others.

Hell i know a while back with amazon cloud system its possible to brute force the name of unencrypted bit buckets and suck their content.. although you dont see the RIAA going after amazon for sharing all the music and videos people were lifting from them from unsecured bit buckets. The owner of the bucket did not know the files were being shared to the world, never the less they were.

I would say they are no different from ACS law and are actually speculatively invoicing people using flawed information/data.

And as others pointed out when the data is collected using means that is essentially hacking/subversion in some cases this data should not be allowed to be used in law.

Interesting if people shared music in a file with a mp3's of X cd or what ever in it and the original copyright holder downloads this file to prove its possible to obtain it from you, they are not breaking copyright in the eyes of the law as they own the original. Where as if the file (archive) also contained an additional file they did not have copyright for, they to would essentially also be guilty of breaking copyright in doing so.... food for thought !

It still seems to me to be a bickering over a control of ownership by the MPAA/RIAA & the subsequent greed entailed with the retail sale afterwards. No matter how they 'spin' (lie is the real word, I'll insert the hyphenated story about putting lipstick on pig here) they aren't even the real owners of the material they are vehemently defending & with the fervor that they're going at it begs to say there's a grossly larger, hidden agenda at its root.

Although I'm tired of my tales of doom & gloom, it seems that here in the US the media is finally seeing fit to echo the rest of our nations mental state & buckling down to report the gross imbalance of standards that seems to be in place in today's society.

To what ends will this lead us & have we all waited too long to start doing any good in a peaceful fashion is probably long since gone. Sit-ins & Cool-aid tests of the 60s ain't gonna do it this time. I've got a feeling that some drastic measures along the lines of what the WW1 veterans did back amidst the great depression. There's still a shroud of BS covering the "Bonus Army" incident & incidents like it involving the military given that prior military individuals can't sue.

My point is, history "is" repeating itself. Like a Hollywood script, its just been updated for a new audience & the RIAA/MPAA is actually stepping up to own this one. My worry is that today's society isn't prepared for a nasty soiled mud & blood encounter (both metephphoric & [hopefully not] literal) that is possibly needed to honestly get rid of the cancer that's got us all choked out.

Your right lord i too feel the wind of change is on us on a global scale.

Humanity will probably never stop perpetuating these cycles for as long as greed and the desire for power is a human experience, eventually the balance is corrected, until another greedy power mad figure fills the vacuum that was left behind.

Although this time technology has change the rules of the game, ok in the real world it has arguably been detrimental to some level. Primarily in the way the local community spirit I grew up with has nearly disappeared. But it has allowed people with common goals, interests etc to reach out to a far greater pool of like minded people on a global scale.

The old style media, like tv, radio, news papers which for many years were peoples only way of learning about events in a one way flow of information are now having to follow the various social networks etc. These I firmly believe are taking over as a primary way for people to access this information and the old style media essentially value adding and playing second fiddle.

I have faith in my fellow members of human race, were a real mixed up bunch, but largely most people are a pretty good bunch, there will always be the bad apples. The difference now is were able to discuss and point them out to the rest with far greater ease.

But Sir Lord, you, me and everyone else have the power to shape a new world and to ensure the mistakes of the past are not forgotten for as long as possible. As mind kind tendency for repetition is born out of lessons that we once learned getting forgotten and/or hidden from sight.

Its our duty as the current generation to ensure we pass the lessons on.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 26 Jul 2011 @ 12:32

@ Plasma247... You're right, we have to do our best to perpetuate the virtues of right from wrong & hope the bulk of it keeps going. I suppose the defeatist would say, "once I'm in the ground, who cares?". I leave that argument for the theologians & philosophers to argue till time's end, but I say if it didn't matter why do we defend so vehemently for our kids, even when they're wrong. And to borrow from Bear Bryant, "If it doesn't matter who wins or looses, why do they bother keeping score?"

I've done my best to teach my kids despite the gross contradictions enticing them daily, but they're old enough now I can only hope I did right & wallow in self loathing if I failed. I served my country as one example of what one man in a mix of thousands of men & women can do & what the cost (a shattered body & mind) can for penance. Has it served as an example? Time's going to be the judge of that one too.

I'll stand toe to toe with the pampered, powdered keisters of the elitists of our government as I did when I was in Korea & refused to go to attention for Rumsfeld. I successfully argued my point then, I can do it even better now. I lead my guys into some really stressful situations & never once let them down, but would never ask folks to put me in a governing office.

My problem with those folks is they seem to think that talking & legal-ing up is the way to bully people around. Another form of school ground politics if you will. Where I can easily out argue these idiots, I have the disadvantage of being ill-funded. Meaning, no money = no networking of mega connections to other outranking sources that money can buy & privilege out of a situation.

Thus my particular favorite alternative source of litigation arises... violence. Something a politician is easy to administer, but never to engage personally. They'll talk a good game, but gutless when duty calls.

Which begs to call, what is it going to take to make all these lawyers, politicians & corporate moguls stop the BS? I think I've already put a silk handkerchief over my sledgehammer & kind of 'rocked on' with Mysttic... I think she should body slam the RIAA lawyers on the way out of the courtroom...

The RIAA has falsely accused people and they are sore losers. In the cases of Capitol Records v. Foster and Atlantic v. Andersen, the RIAA dropped the charges after long, expensive litigation and the judge made the RIAA pay the accused lawyers fees. They fought that tooth and nail instead of saying they were sorry. Read about them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records_v._Deborah_Foster

@numscull... another case for what I was ranting about. Either here or another forum, the RIAA just wants to blanket strong-arm people into paying extortionist moneys in hopes of a 'legal lottery' payoff. If something gets court attention, they just 'hope' they'll lawyer up strong enough against a weak opponent that a law will be enacted allowing them to misbehave uninhibited.

But just like I have argued with some other folks the RIAA/MPAA are idiots... they don't do their home work, they take ghetto approaches to law and slimy, greasy political attempts at getting their way. All under the hospices of making money & the judicial system is getting piss pot tired of it. Almost to the point they're about to open the flood gates on the internet portals & take out adds on all the TV stations & tell folks it's "Free for All Saturday!!!". There is no moral implication of this shite having anything to do with "the good of the artists or the well being of the public".

Burden of proof rides on the accuser in a court of law & it is still (supposed to be) innocent until "proven" guilty. The ONLY exception to this standard is if you are in the military. Then those rights are reversed.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 27 Jul 2011 @ 13:25